How Top Realtors Organize Their To-Dos • Mridu Parikh

Mridu Parikh goes back to the beginning of her journey into becoming a productivity coach. Mridu shares her recommendations for people that feel some part of their life is not where it should be. Mridu extensively discusses how to organize your to-do list in order to have an effective day and time-management. Next, Mridu discusses how to make space for the most important things in life. Last, Mridu talks about her Podcast and what she discusses there.

Please follow Mridu on Facebook and check out her Productivity on Purpose Podcast here.

If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!

Mridu Parikh can be reached at 917.699.5495.

This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks and FollowUpBoss.

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Transcript

D.J. Paris 0:00
How do the most successful real estate agents organize their daily to dues? We’re going to talk about that today. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads and interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren’t converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents. And for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I’m your guide and host through the show. And in just a moment, we’re going to be speaking with productivity coach Murray do Pareek from Life is organized.com. But before we do, we just always ask our audience to help us do really two things. Sometimes it’s one thing today, it’s two things, but they’re pretty easy, we really would appreciate it. Number one, please tell a friend about our show. Just think of one other realtor, maybe one that isn’t very well organized. And not just you. I know if it’s me I’m not I’m never organized. But I can also think about other people that I know that aren’t as organized. And I’m gonna send them a link to this episode because I want them to get more organized. So think about somebody that you know, maybe in your office that could benefit from getting more organized, send them a link to this episode. And the second thing is just to leave us a review whatever podcast app you might be listening to my voice on right now. Let us know what you think of the show. Leave us a review. Leave us some comments. We always are interested to hear what the audience likes and dislikes so we can keep improving. Okay, enough about me. Let’s get organized with my conversation with redo Pareek.

All right, today on the show we have Brittany from Life is organized.com. And let me tell you more about litho. Now she is the founder of life is organized and Ruth is passionate about getting women the results they want whether it’s doubling their business revenue, losing weight, increasing time for self care, her best selling book and productivity podcast share it’s simple strategies to ditch to ditch overwhelm. Marie through us teachings on mastering tasks and habits have been featured in the Huffington Post, Forbes US News and World Report. And real simple and when she’s not wrangling a list or a schedule, you can usually find this former professional organizer turn productivity pro with her two teens and her husband in Nashville enjoying them all back. Please everyone who is listening follow her whether you’re a man or woman, or nine binary or whatever you identify as please go over to Life is organized.com. That’s the home of everything Marie through she’s got amazing resources. And if you just go to life is organized.com forward slash resources there is and we’re gonna have a link to that in the show notes. So if you’re listening to this on a podcast app, look in the show notes, we’ll have a direct link to that. But she has lots of great resources for you and also follow her on Facebook and Instagram. Also, life is organized. So just find her that way and you can get to everything from life is organized.com and last subscribed to her podcast, which is called productivity on purpose. And she brings on experts in all fields of life to help you get to that next level. So anyway, really welcome to the show. We’re so excited to have you.

Mridu Parikh 4:30
Thank you for having me. That was the best intro and by the way, you nailed my name so you have let’s

D.J. Paris 4:38
we have to tell the audience though, I I wasn’t sure how to pronounce it. And so I’ve learned by miss my past mistakes to make sure and I probably set it in front of me at least 50 times going I just want to get this right and so she had to listen to me say it over and over again. So I glad I got it right.

Mridu Parikh 4:55
Yeah, and I say usually takes like a glass of wine. So I’m telling you either you’re drinking right now. Are you just really have I,

D.J. Paris 5:01
I am 17 beers, and I don’t remember what we’re doing right now. But I did get the name right. And I’m gonna pass out and just let you talk the rest of the time because I’m wildly drunk. I wish I was wildly drunk, but I am sadly I am sober. But let’s, let’s talk about, I think this is a really important topic. And by the way, I don’t have a lot of experts outside of top real estate agents on the show. And I should, because I think this is really important is real estate agents have to wear so many different hats. And they’re essentially, in many cases, most of our listeners probably are individual practitioners, right? They don’t have a team behind them. Maybe they have, the firm they work at maybe has some training, some support, they can get help when they need it, but they’re really on their own most of the time. And that is a ton of pressure, it’s a ton of stress. It’s a lot of different hats to wear. And it can be overwhelming, exhausting. And I would love to talk to you all about some some ways to minimize some of that stress and become more effective and efficient. But before that, I want to learn about your journey. Like how did you get into it into you know, becoming a productivity coach? Tell us your journey.

Mridu Parikh 6:20
Yeah, well, first i What did you want to thank you because I know I’m a little bit outside of the box of your gas. And I you know, hoping to drop a lot of value here. But I like that you started with a story because I think that a lot of real estate agents can probably resonate with it, even though I’m not in that industry. When I had an opportunity, let’s say to leave my corporate career of 10 years was because my husband’s job was bringing us from New York to Nashville. This was 17 years ago. So it’s not the it city. It’s not the cool place to be right. Nobody wants to lose. I don’t want to be here. But the only way he got me here was I had I had a two year old and was on my way with the second the only way he got me here was he said the magic words. You won’t have to work. I thought I hit the jackpot. Right? I was like, okay, Sign me up. Let’s go to Nashville, this

D.J. Paris 7:05
deal with the country music,

Mridu Parikh 7:07
right? We get here and of course store, you know, couple years and I’m like, I’m going cuckoo love my kids. I just you know, I missed my work. I want to get back. But I don’t want to go to that career, that corporate job, let me like on this entrepreneurial journey, and no business, starting a business, but let me start a business. Okay. So fast forward trying to figure out what I want to do. I actually landed on home organizing, as you mentioned, it was a professional home organizer, again, way back before like the containers door homesteaded or a condo, it was like, Oh, gee, and this. And I thought, This is my calling. I love it. And I quickly realized I don’t really love organizing other people’s stuff. But what I love is teaching them and coaching them the skills behind it. Like I don’t really like doing it, but I want to teach them how to do it. So I moved into that. And this is where I think probably some your listeners can resonate is that you know, you start this business thinking, I’m going to have so much freedom, I’m going to have so much flexibility that I want to be home with my kids. Let me start my own thing. And then you realize you’re spread too thin, you’re scattered, you’re exhausted. And then this can really kind of lead you to feel like a failure at times. Sometimes it can make you resentful. Well, that was me. That was definitely me. I was not it was not the freedom and flexibility I was looking for I was handcuffed to my business 24/7. And I was working like crazy. And I was thinking how is it possible that I’m working this hard, and I’m still not getting the results that I want. So I jumped into a completely just personal development, like route and I started learning all things productivity, time management, I just jumped into it all taking classes, tutorials book, the whole thing. And after lots of hits and misses, I discovered what worked for me, especially when I was overloaded, which was most of the time, I thought I can either go back to constantly being reactive and feeling behind or I can embrace some new simplicity, some structure, some new beliefs in my life. And that’s essentially what I did over time. Like I went from feeling really defeated to very much on top of all the demands and all the distractions that as a business owner, but also as a mom and as a wife and a community member and a sister and a daughter and all the things right. And so now I teach those skills to other time strapped top producers who want to take back control of their day to write so they have the self worth they deserve they they actually get the business that they thought they were getting when they when they signed up for it so now I help you or help people like your audience who don’t really wake up with a plan that they can stick to stop procrastinating and stop feeling so overwhelmed and just feel really successful every day.

D.J. Paris 9:45
Yeah, I Boy, that sounds great. I was thinking about you know, in my own life I’m like, boy, there’s a lot of things I as you were talking I was like some changes I would like to make for myself as well. But let’s let’s talk about So thank you that I think that’s really helpful to give our audience an understanding of your path. And your journey. And I talk about, I think life, and I’d love to get your thoughts on this is so much about being off track, I think so it’s, it’s, you know, if balance is a myth, although the strive for balance is great, but to actually achieve it, I’ve never done it, but, but that’s okay. Because we’re imperfect. So I’m okay being a little bit out of balance. But I think I always like, I’ve thought about this a lot, where it’s like, instead of striving for being in balance, what I want to do is notice when I’m out of balance, which is a lot of the time, and then, you know, getting back on track, you know, smoothing out the rough edge, and then another rough edge will pop up, and I need to smooth that one out. But I think that has been, you know, something that has taken the pressure off, I think there’s a lot of pressure on women in particular, but but also men to about doing everything. And women are the most obvious example of this, right? You were saying Mother, Wife, Daughter, you know, friend, business owner, those are a lot of responsibilities. And you know, we just expect, you know, people to be perfect, and you’re supposed to do everything. So let’s I would love to talk about, you know, when you notice yourself being a little bit off kilter, maybe your relationship with your kids is isn’t as great as you’d like it to be, or maybe your business is suffering a little or your physical body isn’t quite where you want it to be. And you notice that and then you go, Oh, you know, I’m, I’m not where I want to be, you know, what do you recommend in that in those situations?

Mridu Parikh 11:41
Yeah, so I’ll give you an in kind of a mindset thing, and then maybe like a really tactical, like, really, you know, here’s what we could do in the moment. And you know, in our day, but, you know, often I think we just kind of take a step back and ask ourselves, like, what is truly most important, I often I can usually look at someone’s calendar. And I can tell you what is most important, even though it’s totally unaligned with what you say is most important, right? And so we might say, Oh, it’s my house, of course, I gotta take care of my health, I can’t take care of myself, I can’t take care of anyone else, or it’s my kids, but I barely seen them, or it’s my partner, but we don’t ever have a date night or you know, or it’s my new business development. But I’m really just stuck in my email, and it’s getting new clients, but you know, it’s prospecting, but it’s something else. And so, you know, it’s really just taking a few minutes and just getting back and checking, like, what is it that I’m doing this all for? Like, what I can say it is, you know, it’s there’s talk, but what is really important to me. So if you start there, and this isn’t, like I’m saying, Go take a day off to figure this out. We pretty much all know this intuitively, right? Like, I mean, we could list this out in two minutes. But I think there is something about that exercise of actually like sitting focusing writing that out, because when you see it down on paper, now tactically, you can look at your calendar and say, Okay, this is this really a reflection, because this is the life I say I want. And then I look at all the things that are going on, I think about my day, and it’s just not congruent, you know? So I think it’s a good place to start to step back for a minute. Like, what is it? That’s really important? And let’s start with those goals.

D.J. Paris 13:16
Yeah, I agree. I ran into this just yesterday, I can tell you, we have this is a silly example. But I think our audience can relate to it. It’s not real estate related. But I Well, in a way, I guess it is. But anyway, we had a torrential downpour for about five minutes yesterday here in Chicago. And it was like a crazy downpour. And one of those really cool summer storms that just last a few minutes. And we have white furniture out on our balcony, which you would want to cover when there’s a downpour. And my girlfriend does not share that same belief with me. Not that she wants it to get rained on. But my thought is like whenever we’re not using it, we’re just going to cover it. And our thought is no, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to we’re going to try to remember when it’s going to rain to cover it. But she’s like, I’m just not going to cover it. Each time I use it. That’s that’s does doesn’t make sense to her. And so I was like, but it makes sense to me. But it doesn’t make sense to her. So now we’re at you know, a loggerhead here where we’re at, you know, we have conflicting beliefs. And my belief isn’t really any more right than her she’s allowed to have her own belief and, and I was like, God, I really feel strongly about this. And then I started to think about, okay, I really want this, she really isn’t going to do it. And or she’s going to be resentful if I like, try to force her to, like, abide by this rule, which of course, is not a good idea, either. But if I and I started, like, you were saying, I had to reflect and think what’s most important here? Is it more important that I save this furniture? And by the way, we’re not talking about a $10,000 couch that be like, Oh my god, like, you know, we’re talking about moderately priced couch that can be it’s probably going to get tossed at three or four years anyway. And I started to think about, you know, maybe I just don’t get my way this time, but, but maybe that’s okay. Because my longer term goal is that I want a really good relationship with this woman. And I’m sort of painting her to be this like person who doesn’t care about her. She totally wants to take care of our stuff, we just have a different belief about it. And we did buy all weather furniture. So in theory, we should sort of be able to keep it outside. So she’s not like totally crazy. We just have a different belief. And by me, taking those couple of minutes to think, what’s most important here, it calmed me down. And it got me to realize, Oh, my God, my girlfriend’s way more important, the stupid couch, I’m not going to let it get ruined, but I’m not going to come at her going, we’re gonna we have this new rule, we gotta cover bla bla bla bla bla, which, by the way, she’s gonna go, Yeah, I’m not going to do that. So I just wanted to use that as an example. Because I think if I hadn’t have taken that time, I would have come in guns blazing going, it read on our couch, that you’re not gonna believe, Oh, my God, it’s all good. You know? And that’s what my my mind was. And my emotions were and then I calmed down, and I went, Oh, this is like, kind of silly. Who cares?

Mridu Parikh 16:07
I love that. I love that you put a personal example, because it’s true. Like this is, every part of every decision. Basically, we’re making Rite Aid comes down to that you’re like, is this really worth the battle? Is this the most important? Do I say it’s the most important, but then I’m not really doing what’s most important. I think that’s really where that incongruency is, and it’s just, it’s good, it’s good. Let’s just check out let’s put ourselves in check. Because no one else is gonna do it. Right. It’s up to us at the end of the day to put ourselves in check. So it’s just it’s a good practice, I think kind of like, on those days, you’re like, I’m just running what’s important, just to ask yourself what’s so you know?

D.J. Paris 16:39
So the first thing to do, I think, like you were saying is, is when things get off balance, which is most of the time we’re a little bit off balance, is noticing what’s off balance, like, where’s my life not ideally, working perfectly in the way that I want it to? And then starting to say, Okay, well, my, you know, hey, I want to lose, you know, a few pounds, or I want to get some muscle or I want to have more energy, or maybe that’s those are physical body stuff, or I want my business to grow a certain percentage, or I want to have more clients, or I want to impact more people. First is identifying, you know, what, what those goals are in relation to values, as you were saying, like, what’s really important to me, like, why am I why do I want my business to grow? 10%? Oh, well, then that will allow me to maybe take more vacations with my family, or donate more to charity, or just have build more wealth, so I can retire early, or whatever it might be. So once you start to identify your values, then then sort of where do we go from there?

Mridu Parikh 17:40
So then, here’s how I feel if it does not work on paper, it’s not going to work in real life. Okay. So if we can’t figure out a way at time or place to, to actually work on or put time and energy and effort towards those goals, we can’t figure it, we can’t even see it, it’s probably not going to happen, right? And so I would say, gotta get tactical and actually start looking at your calendar, look at your week, look at your day and say, Am I making the time? Am I making the space? am I planning that for those goals that I’ve identified? Right? Maybe it’s my health, maybe it’s meal planning, maybe it’s prospecting, whatever it may be? How do I carve out the time for it? And what we’ll find is often is, hey, you know, you might not have any time maybe like, there’s absolutely no way, well, then there’s some decisions to be made. Do we do we scale back on something else are those really your priorities, you know, it’d be really your nose aren’t your priorities, like, there are changes, but again, it’s only with that sort of introspection, and that just want to that simple exercise of, you know, deciding here, my goals, and my making the time and space for it. But what else is really great about this, when you start looking at your day like that, you start realizing well, then maybe there is there are other things I shouldn’t, that aren’t priorities that I’m giving effort to that maybe I can take away, maybe there’s some opportunity here for me to delegate something, maybe I don’t have to do everything in the house or at work or, you know, I can outsource a thing. Maybe some of this stuff is just on my to do list, and I feel guilty about it. So I put it on my calendar every day. And now it’s been a month and never happens. Like maybe it’s just time to delete it altogether. Right? And so there’s, there’s a lot of things that happen when you just kind of just sit with that for a minute and think think through, you know, is this important to me, and I think like as you know, again, as go getters and top producers, there is this sense that in order to be successful, we have to do more just doo doo doo doo doo, right? You’re in the chaos, everything’s coming, the emails are coming in phone calls, you’re like, if I just put my head down, I do more everything, it’ll feel better, I’ll feel better. But I would challenge everyone to think you know, if you really want to be successful, do more planning, plan more and do less. And that’s kind of what I’m saying like look at that calendar and say okay, so if there really is a priority for me to prospect or to work out like I’m actually going to take it from list to do my brain to on the schedule, like put it in there. There was just no massive gap between what we believe we can get done doesn’t matter how smart you are doesn’t matter how many letters you got after your name there is it there’s a gap of what I think and get done. And this is what I can actually get done. And so for some reason until we see it on the site calendar on your schedule until you can actually map it out. You can’t I don’t know why we always overestimate it. We’ll always overestimate how much time we have. And then when you see it, you’re like, oh, wait a second between my for showings today and this appointment that there’s no way I could do these, like, what was it? Oh,

D.J. Paris 20:30
and, and mom duty, wife duty, and, you know, whatever, for self care duty,

Mridu Parikh 20:36
totally, totally weak, you know, you feel like a failure often because it’s just simply one thing. It’s not again, not because you’re not smart, not because you don’t have the skills is because you don’t complete what you set out to do. That’s the only reason right? So you have your list of 10 things in your to do list in your mind. Again, this seems totally doable. I’ll just make my list, I can totally do these 10 things today. And you don’t you get through four, and therefore really good things. But all you’re thinking about the end of the day is a six you didn’t feel like a loser, you feel like losers, you only feel like a failure. But what if, what if your list only had four to begin with? Right? And you map them out in your calendar? You got your four down? Or even if you got three out of the four, what do you end up feeling like a total success at the end the day, right? You feel so much better. And that’s how you stay motivated for the next day. That’s what’s gonna get you inspired to, you know, do the hard stuff in the morning that you don’t feel like doing. And so it really is just this like self defeating thing that we do that is just writing these lists and not really like thinking through and planning, When will I get it done,

D.J. Paris 21:38
I have a theory about why we are a little bit that way where we expect ourselves to be perfect. And it’s just a theory. And it’s not backed by any sort of evidence or science. But I suspect it has to do at least here in America. I’m not sure about other countries, I think there was a whole generation and I think parents are a little smarter today. But but the generation or two ago, I think it was a lot about your special, you can do anything you can do everything any the whole world is available to you. And I think what that did is you’re special, you’re unique. And yes, all of that is true. But you can’t do everything, you can’t be everywhere at once, and you aren’t going to be great at everything. And so I think parents are a little bit sat more savvy now to realize, Wow, if I put that expectation on my child, it might actually create a lot of anxiety and stress around needing to be perfect. And so I think I think there’s a culture of like moms are the perfect example. It’s like, it’s like moms are expected to be perfect in every possible way. And it’s just like totally unfair and not going to happen. And I know it can lead to a lot of moms in particular women who are business owners, or just you know, in the working world, who are also trying to be wonderful moms and wives and and community members. And it just is it’s too much we’re asking too much of people. Or people are asking too much of themselves, you know. And and and I think you’re absolutely right, more, I used to think that the more I do, the better I get to feel about myself. That was the rule I had in my head. What a silly rule. Because I never was doing enough, there was always more to do. And therefore I always felt shitty about myself, quite honestly.

Mridu Parikh 23:25
It’s not the quantity, it’s the quality, it’s better to do three awesome kick ass things that make you feel really successful rewarded, then 10 Like, you know, whatever, I just I’m just doing it to check things off my list to get my like dopamine hit, but it doesn’t make me feel good. In fact, that’s a one thing. So one thing I share all the time podcasts like clients start every day if you start every day with this simple question. This is going to be your guide post for the day to focus on those those big goals or things that really matter to you. Just start your morning with this question. Okay. So what five things will make me feel most successful when my head hits the pillow tonight? That’s it, what five things make me feel most successful, my head hits the pillow tonight. So there’s a few things I can break that down a bit. When I say five, I typically personally would recommend three for your business and two personal Okay, so and when and if five feels big. I mean, a personal one could be I want to turn off the lights by 1030 tonight, okay, this isn’t have to be like, I’m gonna go, you know, go train for the marathon. This is just like a simple personal thing where like, what if I did that today, my next day would be great. I’d go to bed, I wouldn’t be watching TV till 1am and all the things I would feel so good if I did that one thing, right? And business wise, maybe it’s, it’s, you know, I want to create that, that that customer that CRM tool or that system or I want to, you know, whatever, create that relationship or go to that networking group. And it’s just you know, three but it could be as simple as I just that that email or that phone call that I had been procrastinating for, like forever. I just want to make that and it’s gonna take me five Minutes. I don’t know why procrastinating it, but I’m gonna get that out of my way, right. And so they’re very simple. You’re actually putting them on your calendar we talked about and you feel great at the end at the end of the day. But here’s the tricky thing about it is that you can fall into what feels good to me right now, versus the end of the day, which is why I said before my head hits the pillow, because what you can sometimes focus on is that you only feel really good right now, if I didn’t make that phone call. And instead, I did by email or jumped on social media. I mean, think about what’s gonna make me feel much better right now. That feels really good. But it’s not the thing. When you go to bed. You’re not like, dammit, I go, I

D.J. Paris 25:40
have to do it tomorrow. Yes. I

Mridu Parikh 25:41
wish I spent more time on social media today. You know, we don’t. So you’re really thinking through? Yeah, you were thinking through in the morning before I when I go to bed tonight? What are those five as tiny as they may be as insignificant as they are, but they make you feel the best. And just tap into your intuition. Again, we all know what makes us feel good. It’s the stuff we procrastinate. It’s the stuff that that’s hard, right? I want to go work out. But if I just did a 20 minute walk, it’d be great. And so those are the things and I get it like there’s no doubt in my mind, if you followed, if you asked yourself that question and followed it, your entire life is going to change, you’re just going to feel so energized every day. So like vibrant, you know?

D.J. Paris 26:23
Yeah, because and I think part of its we’re, like you were saying earlier, we’re so used to beating ourselves up for the things we don’t do. The things that we can’t get to the things that works, we think we’re expected to do that we just aren’t able to because there’s only 24 hours in the day. So let’s, let’s, let’s ask that question again. So what can you do give it and then the five things I want our audience really to because this is a brilliant idea. I I’m going to start doing it myself.

Mridu Parikh 26:52
Yeah, what five things would make me feel most successful, or most rewarded when my head hits the pillow tonight. So you might wake up with that on your alarm like something on your phone, you might have a sticky note on your bathroom? Mirror, might put it on your fridge like something just to remind you think that’s true. But do take that next step and actually think okay, if these are them, where will like when will I do it? Get that on the calendar, get it calendar it because if it’s not on the calendar, it’s not gonna happen.

D.J. Paris 27:19
It’s not gonna happen. Yeah, I, I, we were just having this conversation about motivation versus discipline with a friend of mine from grade school this morning, who we were talking about. She, she and I have been friends forever. And we were chatting about motivation. And I said, you know, I’m 46 now, and I said, motivation is not really got me very far in life, I’ve found that maybe it’s just me, my motivation level to do hard things pretty low, is actually pretty low. And I’m 46. And my motivation probably isn’t going to magically just like, shoot up the charts tomorrow, where I’m going to, you know, do some amazing things like I have found for me, discipline seems to really be what gets me to get things done. And so what you were saying is, you know, look, discipline of like asking that question at the beginning of the day. That’s a discipline, a discipline of thinking, Okay, what’s really important to me today, when I go to bed? What do I how do I want to feel? You know, oh, I want to feel like I did. I did some good work. Okay, well, what would I need to do to feel that good work? And then you and then you, you know, you start to evaluate? Like, okay, well, one of my things is, I want my kids to go like, hey, you know, mom did a mom was really was really present for me for you know, some time today? Or, or, you know, or my my clients go, Wow, you really, you know, you really helped me out. And then you realize, oh, that’s what I’m really after. I’m really after, you know, what I get from accomplishing certain things. And I think that is such a valuable resource. So you’ve actually just given me a lot to think about as a great way to start my day, because I have, you know, like out like all of our all of us, we just have a lot going on. And it’s so easy to get caught up. Like you were saying the dopamine hits. It’s like, urgency, things come in at me the emails are flying in, it’s fun to respond, it feels productive. But is it really what I’m really is that really what I should be doing in that exact moment? The answer is, I don’t know. I have to think about it. I have to reflect and determine. And the thing about scheduling, I could not agree with you more. It For Me, at least if you don’t if I don’t put it on the calendar. It does not it does not get done. So I would like to talk about it to do list because this is where I have a lot of problems. So and I’m sure a lot of us do. So I have a I even have a system I used to do list which is what I’ve been using forever, which I love. It’s great. And I tend to push things from day to day to day. It’s like I have like get my emissions tested. My emissions car test, which is really not that important, but it’s been on there for like a month or two. And I’m like, one of these days, I just gotta go do it. But how do you recommend sort of organizing your to do list so that you can have an effective day?

Mridu Parikh 30:12
Yeah. So I say I typically have about two, two different two very different to do lists. One is a call a master list it just like everything in my everything going on, actually, I’ll say three lists, everything going on. So I might have my master list for work. And I personally like to separate it, I do a work one and a personal one. Not everybody wants to do that. But I just have enough going on on each that I just need to separate ones. So that is my place. And here’s why it’s called a master list. It’s the one place the one place, not the 800, sticky notes, not the backs of envelopes, not all the notebooks not all but you know, the scribbles, little pads all over. It’s the one place that I’m getting down on my thoughts and ideas and to do’s, gosh, the sun just came out. I haven’t had to put that down in a minute. Tell me if it gets too bad. So that’s one place. So it can be by the way, what is your one place where I use Evernote, Evernote, which is similar to OneNote. I’ve recently moved to notion but I’d say Evernote for me it was the list making tool. It’s one of the easiest Evernote and OneNote. So what

D.J. Paris 31:14
was it for audience just pause for a quick second or what are for our audience, Evernote is a note taking tool that is free, you probably wouldn’t ever need to pay for it, maybe you would, but most people don’t. And it’s a great place just to capture thoughts. So we know that, you know, we have got 10s of 1000s of thoughts per day. But so thoughts come and go and when they come, there’s a good chance you’ll forget about it in about 15 seconds. So it’s a good, good thing to have is a way to easily capture that to do or the notes. You know, and you can do it with your device. I use Siri which is I have an apple, I’m an Apple user. And I’ve connected my to do list with just try not to activate the Siri by saying her name. But I do that and I just literally say, you know hey Siri, you know, and then I say add this to my to do list. So that’s my master capture system, you use Evernote, but the point is, is have one one place? Yes.

Mridu Parikh 32:15
One. And and what I do love is just some app, I don’t overthink the app, if you’re listening. It doesn’t doesn’t matter what it is just honestly, it doesn’t matter. We’re making a list. It doesn’t use a paper and a pen. But I do I will say I do like it on the phone. And I used to be a keeper persons. I know how hard it is to move, but because our phones are connected to us 24/7 That no pad isn’t. And that’s why we end up with so much paper because nothing’s with us. 24/7 that’s when you have all the different notebooks and different people. Basically, yeah, so I do like that. And I do the same thing. I connect to my Evernote with my audio. So whatever, you know, you can type it in every time you get a thought. But here’s the thing that I’ve told myself, and I’m typically very positive person. But in this case, it’s something that I have now embedded in my head that every time I think I’ll remember that later. Oh, like, oh, you should read this book or you get a follow up this person. Oh, you should just download that app. i Oh, it’s the best movie. Oh, I remember that. Now, I just tell myself, I will not remember that later. I will remember that later. I just go negative there. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 33:18
assume you have the world’s worst memory. Yeah. Because well, I actually do have the world’s worst, or one of the world’s worst memories. i i would love to be tested. They’d be like, DJ, your early stage dementia, I’m sure. But But yeah, so I just go on set. I’m such a moron. I’m going to forget everything. So I am so I have to capture it or it’s gone.

Mridu Parikh 33:37
It’s gone. Right? It is fleeting. And so I just say even if it’s rote, you’ve never ever heard it 100 times. I will not remember that later. And I just get on my phone. And by the way, it’s not rude. That’s another thing I hear from people really you just say Oh, hold on a second. I just want to write that down before I forget. That’s not rude. You know, like the people are going to appreciate that you’re actually taking the time to like take down their thoughts. So do that. So I have that and I have one like I said one for business one for personal and I’m just basically writing down everything, everything all my so let’s say for business, here’s all these like follow ups I’ve got to do with my clients. Here’s some follow up with prospecting, here’s stuff I could do my financials here you know and I’m just writing things down personally as well kids sports is not okay, so you’re getting things down. But here’s the problem was typically when you’re putting things on your list, they’re actually not to dues they’re actually not tasks they are most often projects Okay, so for example, I might just write before I would change the way I do it before I write update website. Okay great. Do financials menu, you know plan the meals or something your grocery shop okay whatever like right? These are all they seem perfectly normal. Like that’s those are all to do’s but when I think about it, I’m like why do i Why have I not done my website in three months? Why do I keep putting this off? Why does it always go on every week I put on my thing and never comes off. It’s because that is a giant project. It’s not just like updating my website, I’ve got to write the copy and get the new imagery and get the testimonials. My clients don’t you know, there’s like, there’s like, 40 different steps for me to do.

D.J. Paris 35:09
Yeah, that might be updating the website might be a 10 hour event.

Mridu Parikh 35:14
Yes, yeah. And even something much smaller, or let’s say you have to, um, you know, get some information to somebody they ask for now, it’s been like a week, and you just keep putting it off. Because even getting that information is gonna require you to make a phone call, request that thing, research it, get the right options, put together a little proposal and send it over to them, right. I mean, it’s, it’s like a project it is it. So I think anything more than with more than one step to me as a project, you have two steps. It’s a project, right? It is more than one thing. And so where I would say we most of us go wrong is go back. Now, now that you’ve heard this, go back to your to do list and look at each task, say does this have more than one step? And if it does, break it down. So now instead of update website, that will be my project update website, and then below that on Evernote, but on really most of these, you can do check boxes, or whatever I do have my check boxes, I’m like, Okay, here’s the 14 different steps I need to do in order to update that project. So that’s the first step is both two steps. Firstly, you brain dump everything going on in your life, then you go back and say, Is this really a to do or is this a project and I break it down project by project by project, it is an exercise, I’m not gonna lie, it just it takes some time, it’s an investment of time. But when you’re done, you have such a more comprehensive list of things you have to get done. And it’s amazing how much clarity you have, after that you’re like, now, oh, I see why I’ve been procrastinating this for months or weeks or whatever. Because there’s so much. And instead of me saying, when I update my website about today, all I’m gonna do is you know, get the image for the About Me page. And that’s right, you just I’m like, I’m just going to actually check off one thing off my to do list, like it’s a real to do like it’s one task instead of an entire project. So that’s, you know, one of the big things Yeah,

D.J. Paris 37:05
I love this because I am behind on building a website. So I can really relate to this, I need to rebuild our recruiting website for our for realtors. And it’s it’s time and I just keep saying I need to rebuild the website that is, by the way, about a 40 hour project for me. So so it when I think about it, we can all relate think we can all everyone listening, think about a project that you want to complete that you just put in one sentence, like I want to build a new website, or I want to get more clients or whatever it might be. And you realize it creates a lot of anxiety, and a lot of overwhelm. And a lot of like, and what Murthy really just talked about was, okay, we’re going to spend a few minutes, it’s a little bit of work. And we’re going to actually list out all of the steps or at least you know, a lot of the steps. And then we can just start chipping away. When we have you know time we’re going to chip away at these things. We’re not going to think of it as this big giant elephant that we have to eat with one bite, we’re just we’re going to piece by piece, you know, define it and then I’ll and what happens when when I do this exercise is all of a sudden I relax. I’m like, Okay, now I know what I actually need to do. And that is very comforting. It is it my anxiety comes way down. And that’s important.

Mridu Parikh 38:27
percent. And similarly, you know, think of your personal life, right? Where our lives are integrated. If you’ve been like I want to clean up the garage and that’s been on there all year. Let me be you break it down. You’re like Oh, I’m gonna do is collect all the balls. This you know it? What are all the balls in the bin and that’s my only step forward for this weekend or today. And that’s it. And then tomorrow, I’ll get all the brooms together. And that’s it, you know, and so it it it really gives you a tool to start making progress to stop procrastinating, but also feel really good. But what if that putting the brooms with the balls is one of your top five things for the day. Now you feel really great because you started making either started doing that that thing? And then I always say you know, it’s we were earlier talking about motivation discipline. For me, I think how you get motivated is action, like action, insights, motivation. You can’t wait around for motivation to take action because they didn’t comment like

D.J. Paris 39:21
me. Yeah, that’s that’s the first thing if there is a God, I’m going to ask when I was like, couldn’t you given me more motivation? That’s gonna be my first question. And he’s gonna go No. Because it’s not really the key is the key is discipline. I at least the way I see it. I’m curious to get your thoughts.

Mridu Parikh 39:37
Yeah, well, I think you know, you take that first action, so I’ll just stick with the garage because I know I’m on the garage right now. But whatever. Okay, so, you know, like, I’m just gonna go the balls together in a bin. That is going to get you motivated. He might just be like, well, since I’m doing that, I’ll just get all the paints and put them in on the side, right? It that is what’s going to get you motivated is take the one small action a little bit You’d be tiny baby step, you know, you can’t get your butt to the gym every day, don’t make that your goal. My action is I just want to put on my sneakers, there’s a good chance. So this is something I did. I’m getting way, way too personal probably here. But I do think I hear about exercise is a major problem for a lot of you know, adults, and everybody wants to do everybody, right. So I wait, I put my, um, should I even be saying this, I sleep in a T shirt. So I put my I put my yoga pants by by my bed set, but my bed every night, like my yoga pants are there. And so I just wake up more than I put them on. Like I just put them on, I just it’s the first thing that I do. And then I bathroom, I come back, I brush my teeth and I put on like my top about my basically my workout outfit is like right there. So even if I don’t go to the gym, even if I don’t go for the walk, I guarantee, I know when I have those codes on, I’m just more active in the morning, I’m like running around, I’m like to grab the dishes, I’m like running outside, I’m gonna get the guard is I am like I literally become a more active person, even if I didn’t actually get to the workout, right? But when I stay, if I just stay in pajamas all morning, like more on a Saturday, I can also tell you, I’m just slower, I’m sluggish, it’s fine, I’m not beating myself up, I’m just telling you the difference of taking a small action, but how it can impact your motivation, right how it can impact your energy. And so that’s why I do it not because I can always go work out. But I know I’m going to have more energy if I’m in the right, like clothes, you know. So my whole point is, all I’m focused on is the first action. And then I will then I will hopefully get more motivated. So you can do this with anything and anything you’re procrastinating. You’re like, when you break it down like that, especially you’re like, I just have to take the first small little action. And then you know, be whatever comes comes by just gotta take an action.

D.J. Paris 41:46
In the in the 12 step world. There’s a saying that says what’s the next right thing. So, which I love. So if you don’t have to build the whole website, you don’t have to, you know, get the six pack abs immediately. You just have to get the clothes on. Maybe that’s the next right step. And then okay, now I got the clothes on, what’s the next thing? Well, now I need to get to the car, and then I’m going to drive to the gym. And and then you know, whatever, whatever you’re able to do. And it’s you know, it sounds silly to this, I want to talk about this with respect to physical exercise, because I think it’s something we can most of us can relate to is we hear about these stories about people who run marathons, but they started like just walking to the to the mailbox, and you’re like, really? Do you just you just walk to the mailbox, and then that was enough. And then next day, you walked a little further and eventually, you know, now then, you know, six months later, you’re running a marathon and and it’s like, no people actually do that. And that there’s there it’s it’s almost something that I think most of us go, Yeah, I’m not going to be the guy that just walks to the mailbox. But like, that’s a great first step. Right. And, and I think we, you know, if you can just go, I don’t have to eat the whole elephant today, I just have to do the first action and then schedule the next action. You know, you’re gonna you’re gonna have a great life. If you can just keep moving forward with these small steps life is most I think, do you think life is mostly big steps or small steps,

Mridu Parikh 43:17
small steps, it’s just it’s a series of small, consistent steps. It’s like instant, I guess discipline, what you’re saying. It’s just that consistency of small things, small things, small things, small things always add up to big changes. Big Impact. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 43:32
let’s talk about time, because time is the one commodity that, boy, it’s probably the most precious commodity that exists because we have a finite amount of it. And, you know, we’re all kind of bound by the same rules of time. So it’s, in some ways, it’s maybe the thing that’s, you know, the great equalizer is time. And of course, some of us get more time on this planet than others. And I’m not referencing that kind of time, I just mean in a 24 hour period, you know, we can only accomplish so much. So I’m curious on how you start to think about how do you manage all these demands on your time?

Mridu Parikh 44:11
That’s so good. So one thing I think about is like, multiplying time, like how can I multiply which often multiplying time is multiplying me like if there’s an How do I create another me because I feel I need to do all these things. Right? I need I want to do it. That’s the list is so long, so that has always stuck with me that like how do I multiply, duplicate, whatever multiply me, you know, and so that is sometimes true. Sometimes it’s like through automation, right? We have all these great technology tools. So something like sending out emails in bulk or send it you know, there’s just so many ways that we can use automation and technology. Sometimes it’s delegating. We know we can. And delegating is interesting. I think that we can I’m gonna tie this back to when you have your project when you actually have your to do list and it’s all broken down. Another huge benefit of that is when you can start visually seeing all the pieces, you can start delegating little pieces of it, right? I think sometimes we think of delegating, you’re like, I can’t have somebody do my website, right? Because I, I’m the only one who knows it. Well, no one’s asking you to delegate the entire project. But you probably could ask an assistant or your kid or your babysitter or someone to go search online for some images of you know, some houses have some stock photography, you know, like, like, there are things but, but in your head, you’re like, Oh, I gotta do my website. When you break it down. You know, now you’re like, oh, wait, it’s kind of multiplying me it’s I can I can get someone else to do it. So there’s just obvious like delegation, outsourcing. There’s a Yeah, I think there’s the main way that it would say automating delegating, outsourcing. Oh, and then sorry, and then also being more efficient, but that has sometimes to do with process sizing and Systemising. So that’s a big thing is how do you just be more efficient with that time? Through not necessarily duplicating yourself, but I believe we’re multiplying your time in that way. So an example might be if someone once we can appointment with you, they might get, like, how I signed up here, you know, for for us to speak I was it was so odd. It was so systemized, it was amazing. I could get on your calendar, I could fill out some forms, I could, you know, and it kind of took you out of that process and someone you know, and it’s just all it’s just a way more efficient than maybe, you know, sending five emails back and forth and having phone calls to get to the same results. So those are all the different ways but that’s sort of like the mindset I have just how can I multiply or duplicate like what I’m doing some other way.

D.J. Paris 46:41
I want to pause for a moment to talk about our episodes sponsor are one of my favorite companies out there follow up boss. Now after interviewing hundreds of top Realtors in the country for this podcast, do you know which CRM is used by more than any other by our guests. Of course, it is a follow up boss. And let’s face it, following up is the key to taking your business to the next level follow up boss will help you drive more leads in less time and with less effort. Do not take my word for it. Robert slack, who runs the number one team in the US uses follow up boss and he has built a one and a half billion dollar business in just six years. Follow up boss integrates with over 250 systems, so you can keep your current tools and lead sources. Also, the best part they have seven day a week support. So you’ll get the help that you need when you need it and get this follow up boss is so sure that you’re going to love their CRM that for a limited time, they’re offering keeping it real listeners a 30 day free trial, which is twice as much time as they give everyone else. And oh yeah, no credit card required. So you can try it risk free. But only if you use this special link visit, follow up boss.com forward slash real, that’s follow up boss.com forward slash real for your free 30 day trial. Follow up like a boss with follow up boss. And now back to our episode. I think when going back to your earlier point of identifying the projects and all the steps, or at least the big steps or the small steps, and looking at it and then realizing, you know, yeah, so So the initial thought is, oh, I need to build my website or I need to you know, overhaul my business or whatever it might be. And then you’re like, oh my gosh, that’s just too much. It’s overwhelming, I don’t know what to do. And then you list all the steps. And then you go that did using the website example. It’s like, oh, I got to do everything. And then you look at each step and you were saying, but you don’t have to do everything, there are parts of it that you can delegate or you can get a virtual assistant to help with or ask friends and family or co workers or you can actually ask for help. And people can do it like what if somebody could even do half of it for you? Like Wouldn’t that be amazing and thank God we live in a time where there we have the ability to to put these offers out there to in the world and we’re all interconnected. So people from all over the globe can say I can do that for you and I can do it for a reasonable price. Right. And that to me is yes. Is it going to be the level of quality that that your standard? Maybe maybe not. But what if you just what if they got you halfway there or 70% there and they use Chi Minh and and cleaned up the rest? Boy that would that would save me a lot of time for sure.

Mridu Parikh 49:33
For sure for sure. And sometimes you know people will do even better than we did like people have gifts and and here’s the thing they’re focusing 100% on that task which is why often they could do it better than you can Why am I nanny was a better mom in some ways and I wasn’t I was holding my kids because I was also trying to work and do the dishes and do the do the laundry and do the bills and you know and she is just there playing with the kids right like that’s like her only focus and so she was doing a really good job. And so I think, you know, we, we underestimate what focused support were the results that they can actually give us, it’s often better, better that we could do it ourselves.

D.J. Paris 50:11
Yeah, it’s that like one plus one equals three thing, where it’s like, it’s not just, Oh, I’m gonna hire somebody because I don’t want to do it, it’s, I’m gonna hire somebody who specializes in this. And that then frees up some time where I can, if maybe if nothing else, just relax. Or maybe I can spend that time focused in a different direction to achieve something else. Because I want to talk about how to make and I know this is a big hot button for you is how do you make space for the most important things in your life? The priorities? How do you how do you prioritize? So now we’ve got our to do list, we’ve got our projects, we know, okay, here are all the steps of the things I should do. But how do I prioritize this? How do I make space to get these things actually done?

Mridu Parikh 50:57
Yeah. So when they say is, you know, willpower is short lived, we only have so much. And typically for most of us, some, some people are truly night owls and night owls. And their best work is at 10 o’clock at night. But for most of us, our energy is dissipating over the day, like we’re, you know, we’re probably most awake and active in the morning. And by the afternoon, we’re like, I’m going to eat crap. And then by the evening, I’m just tired, right? So that’s happened. So I’d say one thing is, the news isn’t new. But it’s a good reminder that the thing that’s really hard the thing that you keep procrastinating the thing, you know, you know, if I leave this to the end of the day, it’s most likely not going to happen. Do that one first. Just knock it out, right? Like, just do that one first. Because, again, because it does a few things, one, you’re gonna feel really great, you’re gonna get the hardest thing done everything after that is easier. But it also starts it gives you a win, like you’re starting your day, with like a success, right? It’s like a big pat on the back. And it’s like that inspiration. If you start with sort of losses, if you start with this, this, you know, this idea that I’m failing it over the morning, it’s only gonna set up your day, right? That it’s like our energy only gets less and less over the day. So one thing I’d say is commit to that, make it small enough, make it doable enough commit to an action, not the whole project, like all the things we’ve been talking about. But do it first, because that’s just going to build your momentum. So that’s one thing.

D.J. Paris 52:22
I think that’s that’s such a good tip, I wanted to also just really quickly throw in a suggestion. Because I know a lot of us when we wake up, I want to get your thoughts on this. Yeah, I know a lot of us we wake up, the first thing we do is we grab our phones at, I try not to do that. But it doesn’t make me better than anyone. I just try not to because you know, whatever, I have my own routine. But a lot of us reach for our phones. And a lot of us reach for social media. Yeah, that’s going to be part of our routine. And I suspect that for most of us, when we’re for many of us, as we’re waking up, starting our day, and we’re looking at people’s Instagram and Facebook, or maybe tick tock wherever you might be scrolling, and we’re seeing everyone else’s successes. I actually think that could be a demotivator for a lot of people because we see people at their best, or we see what they’re willing to share. And most most people share, you know, their best selves on social media. They’re not sharing the fight they had last night with their spouse, they’re sharing the dinner they had where everyone’s smiling and happy and the kids are everyone’s perfect and, and all of that. And we can tap a button and make the picture look perfect, even if it isn’t actually perfect. I wonder if that demotivates people because I know for me if I looked at that every day, I’d be like, Well, I’m not that happy. I’m not that you know, I didn’t have that night last night. My my night was more rough. So I would encourage everyone to just get a sense of like, how do you feel after if you wake up and you start scrolling through social media, if it’s if it’s inspiring and encouraging, and it gives you energy and you’re like this is what I need to battle the day like awesome, but I think for a lot of us it might actually make us feel less than

Mridu Parikh 54:11
I am 100% with you. When we do like a routine with my clients and that’s the word I use is energize what is going to make you feel energized, what’s going to make you feel excited, what’s going to motivate you it’s going to make you feel vibrant for the day. And I 100% agree even though sometimes people think social media because I love to see my friends I love connecting with them. I completely read that it’s it’s you know you’re seeing oh she sold another $2 million house Oh my god. Right she wanted a perfect vacation and she looks so skinny and her husband is so nice to her but you know just like it is a comparison game. I don’t care what I mean unless you’re just abnormal. I hear you’re comparing. It does not make you feel great. You know there are other ways and like so what is energizing to you for some people it is at going for a walk for someone it’s I just want to Sitting at a coffee by myself, I would love to write, you know, gratitude is a big thing for a reason, right? I just want to read something I’m grateful for so that I can make it through this day. I want to go stare at my child’s crib for a minute. I don’t know, like, there are things that make you really energized. And so to me, I don’t necessarily believe like you have to be up at 5am. I don’t think you need an hour of all this stuff in the morning. I just want everyone to have some big heads, some few little things in the morning, small spurts that make you feel really energized. And I I couldn’t agree with you more. I don’t think social media or the news, quite frankly, is it? I don’t think either one of those serves us well. Yeah. Yeah, there’s a place there’s a place for it and our life. I don’t not first thing in the morning. Yeah,

D.J. Paris 55:38
yeah, I like I have, I have one friend. I know that he just loves seeing every everybody’s social media posts, because he’s like one of those rare people that is just absolutely does not compare himself to other people. So he’s like, the one person I know that does it. But for the rest of us. We’re all like, Oh, yeah. So I think you’re right. So really, the point we’re making is what feeds us, and what debilitates us and knowing what those things are requires attention. We have to write, we have to pay attention to how we feel after we do certain things. And then then that’ll help us go, oh, yeah, I’ll give you a perfect example. I was, this is really funny. So I was, I think we can all relate to this. So I was, I play video games at night sometimes. And I play really stressful games, because I don’t know, I like I like stressful games. And like, you know, not like violent games, really, but just like really hard games. And so I’m like, I was talking to a friend of mine who’s a realtor. And he was he was saying, I go what? He goes, Oh, I play games, too. What games do you play? We were talking about different games and, and he goes, I play golf games, and I go golf game. I’ve never really played a golf game before. Okay, I go, That sounds really relaxing. He goes, Yeah, he goes, what kind of games do you play? And I go, Oh, I play these really stressful, incorrect, you know, incredibly difficult games. And he goes, how does that make you feel? And I go, and my girlfriend was there. And she goes, and I because I was gonna say, Oh, I love it. And she goes, DJ is stressed out all the time, when he plays video games. She because she can see it, she can witness it. And I go, Wait a minute, I actually not that there’s not a place to play stress brain. Like, that’s fine. But she goes DJ is stressed out all the time when he plays video games, and, and the other realtor looked at me who’s a lot wiser than I am. And he goes, Why do you do that to yourself? Why do you play strike? Why don’t you do something that actually relaxes you? And I was like, oh, okay, never thought of it. But it’s about paying attention. Right? It’s about noticing. What result? How do we feel after something? And does this, you know, get us to take action? Or does it get us to curl up in a ball in the corner? And both of those things are valid, but just noticing what, you know, just what does social media do to us? What does the news? What does talking to my mom, you know, or whatever, you know, those kinds of things? Yeah. And the other thing that you said that’s really important is tackling the most important thing first. The hardest thing first hardest thing? Yeah, yeah, the hardest thing, maybe not the most important thing, but the thing that you you’re sort of dreading and in order to get the energy to tackle it, I suspect you have to be in the right mindset. And so what we’re, I think what you’re talking about is setting yourself up so that you have the energy to actually tackle that that big thing.

Mridu Parikh 58:35
100% Yeah, I mean, built, you know, start energetic start with a good vibes are positive, you know, so you’re like, I just gonna knock this thing out and knock this sucker out. And the rest of its gonna be gravy after this, right? If you’re gonna start from a place where you’re a comparison itis and you’re feeling low, and you’re just like, you know, you’re only with that, like, Dread kind of thing. What are you going to have to tackle that hard thing? It’s gonna be even harder, you know? And then chances are you won’t do it later. And then they’ll go back on the list, you feel like a failure. And that’s like, this whole cycle of self sabotage happens. For me, it is always 100% Something to do with my health, like exercise is just kills me. I, I’m 50 years old, I just can I do it all the time. I’m never gonna love it. I’m never gonna look forward to it. It’s just not gonna happen. I don’t like it. But if I don’t do it, and by that, by the way, I mean, like a 20 minute walk. I’m not I’m not running a marathon, but I want to do something that gets me active because I know that gives me the best energy. I know. It gives me the best energy I put on a great podcast, I put on great music. I go for a walk in nature. It just it gives me the best out of my best ideas come to me on that walk. My best. Everything happens to me during that walk. And so I know it’s the hardest thing for me to do. Personally, not professionally, personally. And but I know it’s the best thing for me. It’s the most it gives me the best energy so I’ve just come to terms with I’m not gonna like it. I just got to the first action. I just gotta get my clothes on. And then I can walk out the door and go, you know, yeah, I

D.J. Paris 1:00:01
think so much of life is about accepting your preferences, right, like understanding. I don’t like I don’t like going to the gym. I hate it. Yeah, but I still do it. And and I for for a long time in my life, I thought you had to like everything that you did. And I thought I was a failure because I didn’t like it because I would look at people comparison thing. And I would say, oh, that person built their business way faster than I did. Or they built their body way faster than they seem to get to the gym, no problem, or they’ve saved more money than I have or burned more money or whatever. And, and, and then I realized, like, Okay, well, we all have preferences. And my preference is not to go to the gym, I don’t want to work out. I don’t want to do leg day, you know, on Wednesday, I don’t want to do that. I will like you were saying I, I will probably I mean, it would be awesome. If one day I woke up and I was like, I can’t wait to do leg day. I don’t know if that day is ever going to come for me, it doesn’t really matter. Because I probably you know, if I’m being honest, I probably will just always going to hate working on my legs at the gym. Because you know, whatever. I just don’t like it. It’s painful. It sucks. But it’s important. So how do I get myself to do it? Well, for the majority of my life, I didn’t. Because I thought, Oh, I’m supposed to want to do that I’m supposed to want to and it’s like, no, you just don’t want to do it. But you still should do it. So I made peace with the fact that I was okay that I don’t want to do it. And I’m still going to do it. And I held those two things at the same time. Those two, those two thoughts of I don’t want to do this. And I’m going to do it. And that way, it removed the pressure. Because I think I think real estate agents have this tremendous pressure to just be perfect, right? Like, I’m going to every part of my business is just going to be perfect. And I’m going to love every part of it. And and I’m going to you know, and it’s like no, you’re probably not there’s going to be parts of your business that you just dread. But if you can get yourself to take action, anyway. And honor the fact that Oh, I just don’t like doing that. But I need to do it. I think that’s that’s really the path.

Mridu Parikh 1:02:15
Yeah. And I think what’s important there just just if someone takes this and says, Oh, then I guess I should be doing that thing. I hate doing it doing it anyway. Justin, make sure it gives you the result that you want. Right, so you probably still feel your hate legs, I hit mark them with you never gonna like it. But I know it makes me feel really good. I know, it’s good for my body. I know, it makes me help. But you know, like the results, I’m getting the results, right? Like that is totally better. Don’t do something, though, just because you’re like, well, they said I don’t like it. But I feel like I should do it. And it’s not serving you. So if you’re like, well, I should be on Route mom, because all the other moms are and then you hate it. And it’s sucking the life out of you. And you’re taking away time from your children. And you’re you know, don’t do it just because you know, you think you should and it’s hard. You don’t do it. Because it doesn’t give you the reward. You know what you want it like it isn’t it’s not serving you. So just keep that in mind. If anyone listening, it’s like it also doesn’t really serve you, you know,

D.J. Paris 1:03:11
what you’re saying is so, so important, because we have ideas, we have fantasies of, you know, I’m going to be this type of person, I’m going to, you know, if if I had the expectation that I was going to, like we have about 800 agents here at our firm, if my expectation was, well, we really need to be successful. We need to step 1600. Agents, well, I would feel like a giant failure. We’ve only got 800. But, but when I started, we had no agents. And so it’s like, okay, I know what my goal is. Sure, I’d love to have 1600 agents. But here I am right now at 800. I’m you know, here’s where we are. And I’m going to still try to happily achieve to get to that to get to that number. But I’m not going to feel like a failure. Because I’m I am where I am. I think that’s really one of the biggest challenges is feeling like a failure where you currently are like that is just a big, concrete wall that just stops motivation. It’s like, don’t you think?

Mridu Parikh 1:04:16
Oh, yeah, yeah, if you want to be unproductive, that’s the way good now you’re just like self sabotaging. You’re thinking you’re, you’re, you know, you’re chipping away at your self confidence or self esteem. And it’s yeah, it’s just a negative. It’s a spiraling, like, negative thing going on.

D.J. Paris 1:04:31
Yeah, yeah. So So I think what we’re really talking about is being intentional, I think mindful and really trying to get a sense of we all have preferences, and really thinking about, okay, how does this make me feel? You know, do I look do I, you know, yes, I know, the world says I’m supposed to be, you know, a certain physical shape or a certain financial have a certain financial well being or, you know, spiritual side or a certain amount of friends or money or whatever it might be. Um, but what do I really want? How do I how, what are the steps needed to sort of get there? And how does it make me feel and what’s truly important to me. And I think working through that is, is, you know, again, that’s this idea of happily achieving, you know, this idea of, of, of working through, through in alignment with values. I would love, I want to talk about your podcast, specifically because our audience are podcast listeners. So tell us about your show.

Mridu Parikh 1:05:30
Sure. It’s called productivity on purpose. And it is all about part of what we’re talking about, like the mindset, which I love that we’ve gotten there. Because I think at the end of the day, it’s, you know, we probably haven’t talked that much about time management, you and I, but we’re talking a lot about focus management and distraction management. And so that’s a lot of what I just talked about, too. It’s it’s, it’s, their tools are always there, or they don’t worry about the tools we get so caught up in the right tool on the right list maker on the right project manager tool, it doesn’t matter. It really your mindset and your beliefs. And then like the strategies behind it, all the tools are great. We live in a great now there’s there’s no shortage of tools. So yeah, so I talk a lot about you know, how do we avoid this procrastination? How do we avoid this self sabotage? How do we get out of our own perfectionistic way stop people pleasing you these are get more energy, this is what’s really going to feed to our productivity, this is what’s going to make you you know, feel really great about your day successful, motivated, inspired. So there’s a lot of talk about that. And then I do have guest experts that bring some, you know, their great expertise, whether it’s because my podcast is for is for business owners typically or you know, people that who are like your audience that are basically like their own business. So we talk a lot about you know, how to manage your finances or how to, I had someone say, Oh, she was talking about public speaking, like how to really use your voice in a conversations and take control of the conversation. So there’s a lot of amazing guests.

D.J. Paris 1:06:57
And I the other, I know that you focus a lot on boundaries, too. And I think real estate agents tend it’s been my, my experience with the 1000s of agents that I’ve known, either here at our own company, or just on our show that boundaries tend to be challenging, because we know that real estate happens at nights, nights and weekends. And you know, it’s not uncommon for an agent to get a text at midnight, from a client. And then the agent has a decision and it creates anxiety sometimes, like, do I respond? Do I not respond? You know, how do I set those boundaries. And I know that you go through that, you know, in on your show, you talk a lot about that. And I think setting healthy boundaries, which we didn’t talk about today, is really, really important. And I think that will help guide our listeners into, you know, understanding what’s healthy for you, and everyone’s different. But whatever those healthy boundaries are, you know, Mirtha can help you set those boundaries and so that you can determine what’s healthy for my business, what’s healthy for my personal life. And I just love that. And I think real estate agents boundaries and real estate agents, like, it’s a huge opportunity there to get better at that. Because real estate agents tend to be people pleasers, they tend to want to go above and beyond, because it’s a service industry sort of job. And, and if you don’t have effective boundaries, people will set their own boundaries, and they might not be the same boundaries that you set.

Mridu Parikh 1:08:26
I am so but I can’t be we didn’t we didn’t talk I went to another episode. I’m bad we’re gonna do. Because I have worked with a lot of real estate agents. And I agree, I would, I would say, I’m surprised we didn’t go there, because that’s probably the number one challenge because you’re right there. You know, you’re accessible, quote, unquote, accessible twice all the time. And but you know, it really comes back to those goals, like what is it that you want in life? What is it that’s meaningful to you? Because that’s going to help you set those boundaries. So like, it always starts there, like, what do I really want? You know?

D.J. Paris 1:08:56
Well, I think it’s a great place to wrap up our first conversation, and I would absolutely love to have you on more often. And we can dive into like specific topics. But obviously, you and I had we I love this conversation. So I want to thank you, Matthew for being on our show. And by the way, I want to give a special shout out to you because if I remember correctly, and we are already established, my memory is very poor. But I believe you reached out to us. And I want to say that this is this is something that I encourage everybody to do. If you are inspired by someone or something or you’re a fan of someone or something. You know, we’re so lucky now we live in an age where it’s pretty easy to get in touch with people who we don’t know. And if I remember correctly, Ruth who reached out to us and said hey, I do this daily walk every day. I listen to your show from time to time. I’m a real fan. I’m a fan of what you guys do. I would love to be on your show. That is how we had that is how we found her or she found us that, here we are now. Right? And, and I’m like, Oh, we got to have Ron Moore she’s awesome, right? Take that step, if you’re inspired by people, and I’m not saying I’m, I’m still inspiring, but whatever inspires you reach out to people like that, you know, tell them how much they mean to you tell them, it is, you know, is always welcomed, by, by, especially by people, you know, they love, people love to hear about how they’re inspiring others. So I applaud you for taking the having the courage to reach out to us and, and we get pitched by publicists about maybe 20 or 30 times a week. And we say no to most of them. Because, you know, we just don’t think it would be a good fit. But when somebody reaches out to us and says, I’m a fan of your show, here’s how I it’s impacted my life here. So I think I can add value. It was an instant yes for us. And not just because we want adoration. We don’t care about that. But we appreciate people who go, hey, I can add value to this. And I think I encourage everyone out there whenever you think you can add value to something or someone reach out to them and tell them and you’ll be so shocked at how much what kind of results you get from that. But anyway, shape,

Mridu Parikh 1:11:23
that’s awesome. And by the way that would have been on my list, I’m sure per day as I kept pushing it up and pushing it off. If I was like, this will make me feel so good if I finally reached out to him. So I’m so happy

D.J. Paris 1:11:31
to hear that. Well, you did. And here we are. And we are grateful. And coming up on the end of the episode here. I want everybody, everybody, everybody to please go to Life is organized.com. That’s the hub of everything read through. She is a life productivity coach, a life coach, she’s the real deal. This is a real real deal person who knows strategies, she can help you get out of your own way. And she has a podcast. So get get, get subscribed to productivity on purpose, that and also, the last thing is life is organized.com forward slash resources. We’re gonna put all of these links in the show notes, but she’s got a tremendous number of resources, subscribe to the podcast, check out our website, and hire her to help you get your life organized. Gosh, I you know, nobody’s life is too organized. At least mine isn’t. And I need help. Everybody needs help. And I think you know, this is the way to go. So Ruth, thank you so much for being on our show. We are so grateful you came on. And I’m jealous that you live in Nashville because that’s one of my favorite places. But and I know you love Chicago too. But we are grateful that you were able to talk to us today. And I hope all of our audience goes on and starts subscribing to your to your content. And then also on behalf of our behalf Rita and myself, we want to thank our audience for continuing to support our show, please tell a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing this great conversation with me through and send them a link to our maybe our website, keeping it real pod.com or have them pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button right there. Thank you so much. And I am going to want to have you on again. So we will set up some additional conversations. So thank you so much.

Mridu Parikh 1:13:23
Thank you this this was a gift and you’re amazing and thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me.

D.J. Paris 1:13:29
Alright, we’ll see everyone next time. Thank you